History Of Science

"The other mistake that is widely attributed to Einstein is that he was on the wrong side in his famous debate with Niels Bohr over quantum mechanics, starting at the Solvay Congress of 1927 and continuing into the 1930s. In brief, Bohr had presided over the formulation of a “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics, in which it is only possible to calculate the probabilities of the various possible outcomes of experiments. Einstein rejected the notion that the laws of physics could deal with probabilities, famously decreeing that God does not play dice with the cosmos. But history gave its verdict against Einstein—quantum mechanics went on from success to success, leaving Einstein on the sidelines. All this familiar story is true, but it leaves out an irony. Bohr’s version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed, but not for the reason Einstein thought. The Copenhagen interpretation describes what happens when an observer makes a measurement, but the observer and the act of measurement are themselves treated classically. This is surely wrong: Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe."

"To this day, many researchers agree with Bohr's pragmatic attitude. The history books say that Bohr has proved Einstein wrong. But others, including myself, suspect that, in the long run, the Einsteinian view might return: that there is something missing in the Copenhagen interpretation. Einstein's original objections could be overturned, but problems still arise if one tries to formulate the quantum mechanics of the entire universe (where measurements can never be repeated), and if one tries to reconcile the laws of quantum mechanics with those of gravitation. But I am running far ahead in my story (I will return to this point in chapter 28). For a correct description of atoms and molecules, quantum mechanics is a perfect theory."

"Albert Einstein, who was in many ways the father of quantum mechanics, had a notorious love-hate relation with the subject. His debates with Niels Bohr—Bohr completely accepting of quantum mechanics and Einstein deeply skeptical— are famous in the history of science. It was generally accepted by most physicists that Bohr won and Einstein lost. My own feeling, I think shared by a growing number of physicists, is that this attitude does not do justice to Einstein’s views. Both Bohr and Einstein were subtle men. Einstein tried very hard to show that quantum mechanics was inconsistent; Bohr, however, was always able to counter his arguments. But in his final attack Einstein pointed to something so deep, so counterintuitive, so troubling, and yet so exciting, that at the beginning of the twenty-first century it has returned to fascinate theoretical physicists. Bohr’s only answer to Einstein’s last great discovery—the discovery of entanglement—was to ignore it."

"The refutation of Einstein’s criticism does not add any new element to the conception of complementarity, but it is of great importance in laying bare a very deep-lying opposition between Bohr’s general philosophical attitude and the still widespread habits of thought belonging to a glorious but irrevocably bygone age in the evolution of science."

"We, of course, were sure that on that particular debate Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong."

"The famous debate between Einstein and Bohr began at the Solvay Council in 1927. The debate was about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, but also addressed the fundamental question of what the purpose and aim of a physical theory should be. Their conflicting positions were based on two diametrically opposed philosophical approaches to the fundamental problems of physics. The many books popularising quantum mechanics quite rightly place the emphasis on the problem of interpretation: they discuss the opposing positions of Einstein’s “realism” and the “Copenhagen interpretation” of which Bohr is seen as the leading protagonist."

"To recap, I had four numbers to add together. If the total came to under 2, then Einstein’s version of quantum reality was correct and the world is deterministic, rather than probabilistic, with quantum entities existing prior to being observed. But if the total came to over 2, then Niels Bohr was right and there is no objective reality out there in the absence of measurement and the subatomic world is ruled by chance and probability. [...] So, sorry Einstein, victory goes to Bohr instead."

"...The present revolution of scientific thought follows in natural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epochs in the history of science. Einstein's special theory of relativity, which explains the indeterminateness of the frame of space and time, crowns the work of Copernicus who first led us to give up our insistence on a geocentric outlook on nature; Einstein's general theory of relativity, which reveals the curvature or non-Euclidean geometry of space and time, carries forward the rudimentary thought of those earlier astronomers who first contemplated the possibility that their existence lay on something which was not flat. These earlier revolutions are still a source of perplexity in childhood, which we soon outgrow; and a time will come when Einstein's amazing revelations have likewise sunk into the commonplaces of educated thought."

"The history of the rainbow from the age of myth to contemporary optics is an example wrought in miniature of our unfolding penetration of and relation to natural phenomena. ...Yet while engaging in itself, the history of the rainbow hides within it another story far more significant than an external history of science. For the changing images of the rainbow reflect to us momentous changes in the fabric of consciousness itself. The history of light, the rainbow, and more generally the history of science continue to act as a text in which we read the psychogenesis of the mind."

"Notwithstanding the broad foundation for mechanics laid by Newton in his Principia, and notwithstanding the indefatigable labors of Clairaut, d'Alembert, the Bernoullis, and Euler, there was near the end of the eighteenth century no comprehensive treatise on the science. Its leading principles and methods were fairly well known, but scattered through many works, and presented from divers points of view. It remained for Lagrange to unite them into one harmonious system. Mechanics had not yet freed itself from the restrictions of geometry, though progress since Newton's time had been constantly toward analytical... methods. The emancipation came with Lagrange's Mécanique Analytique published one hundred and one years after the Principia."

"This statement appears to us to be conclusive with respect to the insufficiency of the undulatory theory, in its present state, for explaining all the phenomena of light. But we are not therefore by any means persuaded of the perfect sufficiency of the projectile system: and all the satisfaction that we have derived from an attentive consideration of the accumulated evidence, which has been brought forward, within the last ten years, on both sides of the question, is that of being convinced that much more evidence is still wanting before it can be positively decided. In the progress of scientific investigation, we must frequently travel by rugged paths, and through valleys as well as over mountains. Doubt must necessarily succeed often to apparent certainty, and must again give place to a certainty of a higher order; such is the imperfection of our faculties, that the descent from conviction to hesitation is not uncommonly as salutary, as the more agreeable elevation from uncertainty to demonstration. An example of such alternations may easily be adduced from the history of chemistry. How universally had phlogiston once expelled the aërial acid of Hooke and Mayow. How much more completely had phlogiston given way to oxygen! And how much have some of our best chemists been lately inclined to restore the same phlogiston to its lost honours! although now again they are beginning to apprehend that they have already done too much in its favour. In the mean time, the true science of chemistry, as the most positive dogmatist will not hesitate to allow, has been very rapidly advancing towards ultimate perfection."

"Understanding what M-theory really is—the physics it embodies—would transform our understanding of nature at least as radically as occurred in any of the major scientific upheavals of the past."

"We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours."

"The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus."

"Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. ...they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old—the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation..."

"In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammelled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and of science."

"The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended; and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements."

"The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever."

"The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed."

"Our species, from the time of its creation, has been travelling onwards in pursuit of truth; and now that we have reached a lofty and commanding position, with the broad light of day around us, it must be grateful to look back on the line of our past progress;—to review the journey."

"The effect of these researches has been, a persuasion, that we need not despair of seeing, even in our own time, a renovation of sound philosophy, directed by the light which the History of Science sheds. Such a reform, when its Epoch shall arrive, will not be the work of any single writer, but the result of the intellectual tendencies of the age."

"The important thing for the progress of physics is not the decision that a theory is true, but the decision that it is worth taking seriously—worth teaching to graduate students, worth writing textbooks about, above all, worth incorporating into one’s own research."

"The treatment of the kinetics of a material system by the method of generalised coordinates was first introduced by Lagrange, and has since his time been greatly developed by the investigations of different mathematicians. Independently of the highly interesting, although purely abstract science of theoretical dynamics which has resulted from these investigations, they have proved of great and continually increasing value in the application of mechanics to thermal, electrical and chemical theories, and the whole range of ."

"Without the stupendous work of Ptolemy, which completed and closed antique astronomy, Kepler's , and hence the mechanics of Newton, would have been impossible. Without the conic sections of Apollonius, which Newton knew thoroughly, his development of the law of gravitation is equally unthinkable. And Newton's integral calculus can be understood only as a continuation of Archimedes' determination of areas and volumes. The history of mechanics as an exact science begins with the law of the lever, the laws of hydrostatics and the determination of mass centers by Archimedes. ...all the developments which converge in the work of Newton, those of mathematics, of mechanics and of astronomy, begin in Greece."

"Our technology is based entirely on mathematics and physics. ...The unprecedented growth of natural science in the 17th century was followed ineluctably by the rationalism of the 18th, by the deification of reason... Science is the most significant phenomenon of modern times, the principal ingredient of our civilization — alas! ...the most important question for the history of culture is: How did our modern natural science come about? It will be conceded that most historical writings either do not consider this question at all, or else deal with it in a very unsatisfactory manner. For example, which are the histories of Greek culture that mention the names of Theaetetus and of Eudoxus, two of the greatest mathematicians of all times? Who realizes that, from the historical point of view, Newton was the most important figure of the 17th century?"

"One cannot genuinely practice the history of a scientific subject without also living and breathing the science itself."

"This subject crosses most cultures and places... It might even be argued that this discipline was the link that brought geometric models of the cosmos together with numerical computation in a synthesis that allowed theory to be converted into prediction: the birth of the exact sciences. All this makes it hard to believe that trigonometry has never been given a proper book-length historical treatment in English."

"Where Francis Bacon had provided the manifesto for experimental science, René Descartes... did the same for scientific theory. And though in the three hundred years since 1650, there have been occasional conflicts between the Baconian and Cartesian tendencies in modern science, their opposition has been creative, and out of it have come many of our most profound insights."

"[T]he ancients possessed a considerable acquaintance with many operations of technical chemistry... Their methods were probably jealously guarded and handed down by successive members of the crafts as precious secrets. ...But, under the conditions in which their industries were prosecuted, the scientific spirit was not free to develop, for science depends essentially upon free inter-communication of facts ...Moreover, the great intellects of antiquity, for the most part, had little sympathy with the operations of artisans, who, at least among the Greeks and Romans, were, for the most part, slaves. Philosophers taught that industrial work tended to lower the standard of thought. The priests, in most ages, have looked more or less askance at attempts, on the part of the laity, to inquire too closely into the causes of natural phenomena. The investigation of nature in early times was impossible for religious reasons. There was an outcry in Athens when the thunderbolts of Zeus were ascribed to the collision of clouds. Anaxagoras, , Plato, Aristotle, Diagoras, and Protagoras were charged by the priests with blasphemy and driven into exile. Prodikos, who deified the natural forces, as did Empedokles the primal elements, was executed for impiety. Sacerdotalism in Athens had no more sympathy with science than had the Holy Congregation in Italy when it banned the writings of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and sent Giordano Bruno to the stake. The educated Greeks had no interest in observing or in explaining the phenomena of technical processes. However prone they might be to speculation, they had no inclination to experiment or to engage in the patient accumulation of the knowledge of physical facts. ...The influence of a spurious , which lasted through many centuries and even beyond the time of Boyle, was wholly opposed to the true methods of science, and it was only when philosophy had shaken itself free from that chemistry, as a science, was able to develop."

"Science had shifted, thanks to Bacon, into an emphasis on empirical observation. The problem is that, without a proper method, empirical observations can lead you astray. Hume came to... stress the need for some rigor in the gathering and interpretation of knowledge... epistemology... Hume is the first modern epistemologist... he was an obsessive skeptic and never believed... that a link between two items could be established as being causal."

"David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the black swan problem by... John Stuart Mill) No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

"The development of human thought and achievement, as a whole, has not been, as commonly supposed, a continual upward progression, nor even the equivalent of a continuous series of ascertained results. Thoughts and inventions, which seemed on the verge of practical fruition, have often been reduced to nothingness, even at the most decisive moment, through some combination of untoward circumstances; yes, even the very memory of a pathway broken into the Land of Promise is often obliterated and what seemed accomplished fact has had to be recreated by laborious work covering years, decades and even centuries. Just the simplest, most natural and, in the end, almost self-evident facts are the hardest to evolve and elucidate, just what was most decisive and potent of result has been time and again overlooked by the seeker after truth. ...The gold of historic thought, indeed, is as little to be found in the street as the gold of actual daily strife, and it is by no means the task of the historian of broad general scope to give the initial clew to its discovery. He, indeed, can only reproduce the past with fidelity and exactitude. The intuition of the true investigator and pathfinder of today and tomorrow must find its own way to new guiding principles from the work of yesterday, before yesterday, and the distant past."

"Lagrange's "" is perhaps his most valuable work and still amply repays careful study. ...the full power of the newly developed analysis was applied to the mechanics of points and rigid bodies. The results of Euler, of D'Alembert, and of the other mathematicians of the Eighteenth Century were assimilated and further developed from a consistent point of view. Full use of Lagrange's own made the unification of the varied principles of statistics and dynamics possible... Newton's geometrical approach was now fully discarded; Lagrange's book was a triumph of pure analysis."

"No scientific discovery is named after its original inventor."

"Descartes's so-called dualism is often taken to represent a fundamental revolution in ideas and the starting point of modern philosophy. ...but in substance his work is... better understood as an attempt to conserve the old truths in the face of new threats. His dualism was in essence an armistice... between the established religion and the emerging science of his time. ...isolating the mind from the physical world... ensured that many of the central doctrines of orthodoxy—immortality of the soul, the freedom of will, and, in general, the "special" status of humankind—were rendered immune to any possible contravention by the scientific investigation of the physical world. ... For men such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, solving the mind-body problem was vital to preserving the theological and political order inherited from the Middle Ages... For Spinoza, it was a means of destroying that same order and discovering a new foundation for human worth."

"Two points should be specially emphasized in connection with the general theory of relativity. First, it is a purely physical theory, invented to explain empirical physical facts, especially the identity of gravitational and inertial mass, and to coordinate and harmonize different chapters of physical theory, especially mechanics and electromagnetic theory. It has nothing metaphysical about it. Its importance from a metaphysical or philosophical point of view is that it aids us to distinguish in the observed phenomena what is absolute, or due to the reality behind the phenomena, from what is relative, i.e. due to the observer. Second, it is a pure generalization, or abstraction, like Newton's system of mechanics and law of gravitation. It contains no hypothesis, as contrasted with the atomic theory or the theory of quanta, which are based on hypothesis. It may be considered as the logical sequence and completion of Newton's Principia. The science of mechanics was founded by Archimedes, who had a clear conception of the relativity of motion, and may be called the first relativist. Galileo, who was inspired by the reading of the works of Archimedes, took the subject up where his great predecessor had left it. His fundamental discovery is the law of inertia, which is the backbone of Newton's classical system of mechanics, and retains the same central position in Einstein's relativistic system. Thus one continuous line of thought can be traced through the development of our insight into the mechanical processes of nature... characterized by the sequence... Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Einstein."

"The history of science on the part of students will give them a better understanding of the broad tendencies which have determined the general course of scientific progress, will enlarge their appreciation of the work of successive generations, and tend to guard them against falling into those ancient pitfalls which have bordered the paths of progress."

"That the Babylonians were Syrians, I believe that nobody will deny. Consequently, they are greatly mistaken who say that it is not possible that the Syrians know something of such matters (astronomy), since these Syrians were the inventors and the first Masters in these matters. Ptolemy again renders witness to this in the "Syntax" (Almageste), because when he chooses an origin for the computation of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets, he does not start with the years of Greek kings, but with those of the kings of Babylon, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians. I said Nebuchadnezzar, not the one of whom the prophet Daniel was the contemporary, but another more ancient. Ptolemy has thus given in the "Syntax" that the years that have passed since this first Nebuchadnezzar ---- i.e. of the Babylonian and Persian kings ---- until Philip (Arrhidaeus) the Macedonian, the successor of Alexander the founder of Alexandria, (are in the number of) four hundred and twenty-four years. There he rightly shows that he found among the Babylonians, and not among the Greeks, the beginning and foundation of the calculations which he made. It is thus on this foundation that he built and that he piled up the many calculations that he made."

"Science, especially evolutionary sciences, can only proceed from learning about theories of hypotheses that do not stand the test of time."

"Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions."

"The history of science should not be an instrument to defend any kind of social or philosophic theory; it should be used only for its own purpose, to illustrate impartially the working of reason against unreason, the gradual unfolding of truth, in all its forms, whether pleasant or unpleasant, useful of useless, welcome or unwelcome."

"The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up."

"Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations."

"It is childish to assume that science began in Greece; the Greek "miracle" was prepared by millenia of work in Egypt, Mesopotamia and possibly in other regions. Greek science was less an invention than a revival."

"The history of science familiarizes us with the ideas of evolution and the continuous transformation of human things... It shows us that if the accomplishments of mankind as a whole are grand, the contributions of each is small."

"The history of science should be the leading thread in the history of civilization."

"The relativity and quantum theories provide good examples of one of the most characteristic features in the development of scientific ideas—namely the fact that every major advance, resulting in a new representation which post factum can be seen to have reduced the earlier picture to one whose results approximate closely to those of the newer one in special cases, has been connected with a revolutionary change in outlook, and with a radical revision of the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the earlier picture. It is at such turning-points that scientific thought is most clearly revealed as creative speculation, kept within certain boundaries, and corrected, by facts and experimental evidence... akin to that sphere of inspiration which brings about the great creations of art: both constitute sudden and unpredictable insights into reality which no artificial and mechanical devices, such as computers, could ever achieve. ...science in the making can be seen to be as much an experiment with ideas as a search after significant experimental data."

"The history of science—especially physics—has in part been the tension between the natural tendency to project our everyday experience on the universe and the universe's noncompliance..."

"Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us."

"Histories of scientific thought tend to obscure the revolutionary state of knowledge in the age of Archimedes—the Hellenistic period—toning down the differences between it, the natural philosophy of classical Greece two centuries earlier, and even the prescientific knowledge of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia."